Why do I need this?
Firefox is a successful web browser that is used by approximately 1/5 of the worlds online population (and growing). It is available for Linux, Mac and Windows, for free. You may well have already used it on mac/windows.

Seamonkey, the web browser that comes with Puppy Linux does a great job for its size, but sometimes it struggles to display some pages properly. Puppy Linux also doesnt come with Java, which is needed for facebook chat, ebay search filters and RuneScape etc. Another problem is Flash (thats a whole big problem). The Flash player included is quite old, and wont work at all with facebook videos and many web tv sites. If you are going to use puppy linux installed for full time use and you use these popular sites regularly, you will need this.

This package is an easy "download & click" .pet that will sort out all of these problems automatically, designed for "linux-newbs" who want it to "just work"!

Instructions

1. Click on one of the blue links under "Download mirrors" below. Choose one that is as near to you as possible for the fastest download. If you are downloading using standard puppy linux and Seamonkey, you should select "open with default application(petget)", when you click on the linux above.

Hint: You could also save it so you can use it again without re-downloading if you need to reinstall. When you click on the file the same things will happen as in point 2 below. Remember mirrors cost us linux crowd money and most of us dont have a lot!

2. When it is has finished downloading, a box will come up, select "install" and wait a while (depending on the speed of your computer) for it to install.

3. It will put an entry in the start>internet programs from the menu button in the bottom left. You can also make a desktop shortcut by clicking on "file" (in the top left on standard puppy), "my-applications" and then "bin" (short for "binary", nothing to do with rubbish!). In the folder there you will find a icon for firefox. "Drag and drop" that onto the desktop to make a shortcut. You can also use the left hand side pop out bar if using pWidgets to drag and drop from there. Pwidgets is in puppy 4.2 by default.

For you trigger happy "Redmund Refugees", the shortcut is a special type that means if you "double-click" it, you will still only get one firefox. Get used to single clicking quickly though before you wear out your mouse!

2. Use tabs by right-clicking a blue link and selecting "open in new tab". This keeps the origional page open and is very powerful once you get used to it. Good for google searches.

3. There is wealth of add-on's available for firefox to do just about anything you can think of, as well as many attractive themes/skins to improve its appearance. You can find these under "tools>addons" on the tools menu at the top.

4. Also on the tools menu, there is an option to clear your private data and web browsing history, and unlike some other web-browsers...it actually does this when you tell it to.

5. You can edit your preferences by using "edit>preferences" (not "tools>options") from the top pull down menus. This is for things like setting up password-saving, and locations for saving downloaded files, security, history etc

6. Firefox includes a free spell checker. Right click a word in an email/web post you are writing and it will bring up a list of suggested. Unidentified words are underlined with a dotted red line.

NOTES (read first!)

Size
This package is very big! You will need at least 300mb of spare space in your pup_save.2fs file to install it. Its uses about 150mb when installed (half as big again as all of the rest of standard Puppy Linux!).

Note: Click "menu>filesystem>PartView" to check space...if necessary use "start>utility>resize personal storage file" to make your storage file larger before installing it. You will need to reboot after doing this, and before you install this .pet. If you dont have enough space it wont install!

Security/updates
You may see a message saying there is an update available for firefox. Its highly recommended you say "yes" to this. This provides you with all of the improvements that mozilla has made to firefox since their last update. Sometimes theoretical "security holes" can be discovered (because the design is open) and these updates repair them before malicious hackers can exploit them. Sometimes it takes Microsoft years to do anything about this (even when they know about security holes), whereas it can take mozilla a few hours. Because of this, Firefox on Linux is *much* more secure for banking/ebay etc. If your bank doesnt support firefox yet, get onto them about it...or change banks, (or even better, dont trust the banks to keep your money from being stolen at all...sorry John )

Slowness and crashes when viewing videos/playing flash games
Sites with a lot of animation/videos will sometimes make this browser "crash" (disappear). This is because Adobe Systems, who make the software for these sites (called a "flash player") will not allow us nice linux programmers to fix it, or we would have a long time ago! This is called "proprietory" software, and it generally doesnt work as well as "open-source" software (windows=proprietary, gnu/linux=opensource!)

The flash player for linux is basically not very well made. As well as failing (crashing) a lot, its also very slow, so you will need a faster computer to make up for that. From what Ive seen, you really need at least a 800mhz processor with 256mb of ram (under about eight years old should be about ok) to get a reasonable speed when playing videos. This is a shame because Puppy Linux can do everything else on a lot older computers

This is a big concern to us, so a group of talented people have got together (mostly for free!) to make a much better one. The project to do this is called "Gnash", and although theyre doing a great job, Gnash doesnt quite work with all the sites most people need it to yet (though it does with some of the main ones like youtube). Adobe make this difficult for them because they keep how their flash player works inside a secret.

Also, if the flash player was "open-source" people would be able to play videos on phones, games consoles, BSD, iPhones, older Apple Macs or anything else they wanted to.

If this annoys you (which it will!) there are a few simple things you can do about it:-

1. Contact the owners of the websites which cause firefox to crash, and ask them to make their websites work with gnash, or only use older parts of flash which tend to work better! If enough people contact them they will (remember most websites work using linux/free software).

2. Email Adobe Systems, and ask them (politely of course!) to improve the flash player for linux, or release the secret design of it so we can do it for them.

3. Donate some time to testing gnash and helping them improve it. If you dont have the technical skill to do that, you can send the programmers some money to help them along and pay their expenses. This is done through the Free Software Foundation as its one of their sponsored projects. If you cant afford to send money, at least send some free encouragement

These are the same people have brought you a lot of free software, so think about how much money you are saving not having to pay licience fee to Microsoft/others, or a new computer to run Vista, and how much safer from viruses and security problems because of "free" software you are, and dig deep in your pockets.

Credits

Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the internet and writing the first web browser (no Microsoft didnt invent the internet).

The Mozilla Foundation for producing an excellent free and open web browser and "freeing the web" from the tyranny of the evil Microsoft proprietary blue "e".

Sun Microsystems For the Java internet tools, and the foresight and generosity of opening java up so it may be continually improved and scrutinised.

Adobe Systems For all the crashes, problems, security concerns, lost emails and forum posts, ruined films, slow computers/wasted time suffered by me and everyone else on the internet - through of lack of aforementioned foresight. You should be ashamed

Puppy would make an excellent gnash base, because apparently it runs a lot more efficiently than flash, therefore would be a lot better for sub-800mhz machines that Adobe Flash struggles on. We could provide them with some useful feedback too._________________Puppy Linux's Mission

Sorry, my server is down atm!Last edited by ecomoney on Wed 25 Mar 2009, 06:43; edited 1 time in total

as far as i can make out, if you register a project at https://launchpad.net/
you can host things for free and Canonical Ltd. (ubuntu) has lots of money._________________
ASUS EeePC Flare series 1025C 4x Intel Atom N2800 @ 1.86GHz RAM 2063MB 800x600p ATA 320G
_-¤-_<º))))><.¸¸.•´¯`•.#.•´¯`•.¸¸. ><((((º>

I have problems with pent up rage Im afraid. I wanted to emphasise the point that nearly every company/individual that gives us the internet as we know it have been/or are being open sourced and Adobe are the only stick-in-the muds that cause most of the problems.

As you know I look after a lot of peoples puppy computers (hence an awareness of the level of the instructions needed, and the googleable "internet explorer" in the title) Flash crashing the only thing most users ever complain about with Linux. Ive taken a lot of earache about it over the years, as well as suffered from it a lot myself. Some of my clients have even gone back to windows because of it (usually the few better off ones that can afford new computers and expensive repair/devirusing bills). I hate not being able to "fix" things! That last post made me feel a whole load better.

If the flash problem really is really getting people down, Ive found a workaround that is far from ideal, but may work if say you want to watch a long movie online with smoother rendering. Run the Windows Firefox with the windows Flash Player using wine! The windows flash is a lot less less buggy/bloated. This is a dangerous road to go down though. I just wish they just did an "ndiswrapper for flash" as a stopgap until the gnash people work out adobes cryptic codes...at which point adobe will probably be forced to go open source like everyone else.

@ Arrf: Apparently its a grey area about hosting flash for download because of Adobes "youve got to get it from us and us alone" close-minded mentality. Even Canonical have had problems distributing flash with their operating systems for fear of lawsuits. Sometimes having no company with no money is an advantage

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